July 28, 2016
Source: Bigstock
But just as EugeneNix can declare victory, so too, in theory, could the conservative press. After all, a major left-leaning, conservative-unfriendly paper was just soundly humiliated. This should be cause for celebration, right? In any other election year, Beck, NewsBusters, NRO, PJ Media, Horowitz, Whittle”they”d be all over it. But not this year. The establishment conservative Never Trumpers are probably as upset as the WaPo editors that DonaldTrump2016 was a hoax. So for the next three months, don”t expect the usual assortment of “look how the biased lamestream media is unfairly attacking our candidate” pieces. The mainstream media will continue to attack Trump, and this year, a large segment”perhaps a majority”of conservative bloggers and journos will be content to sit back and cheer it on.
And I kind of like that. I think there’s one thing that gives the Trump campaign the genuine potential to “change” things, to remake the landscape of American politics. And no, it’s not Trump himself. Rather, it’s the fact that a Trump victory, for better or worse in terms of his policies and conduct as president, would completely demolish what everyone has come to believe to be the reality of how one gets elected president in the U.S. We”re told you need “the media” on your side. We”re told that if you don”t have the mainstream media on your side, you need the conservative media to expose the MSM’s bias. We”re told you have to be coached, trained, and handled by well-paid experts so that you don”t say half-assed or contradictory things. We”re told you have to be “presidential” in demeanor, that you have to build an extensive (and expensive) ground operation in every important state, and that you need the unfailing support of your party’s establishment. Thousands of people”consultants, spin doctors, PR execs, party bosses, media gurus, pundits, pollsters, and other assorted “experts”””get paid millions of dollars because we”re told that this is how it must be done, that the system not only works but is required.
But is it? Or is it just a lie agreed upon? I liken it to internet advertising, the pop-ups and auto-play videos and banners and Lightboxes and everything else that makes you click off a site before you accomplish what you went there to do. We”re told those ads work, and an entire industry has sprung up to push that line. But objective experts admit, we don”t have a clue if they actually do work. Back in my day, the Nielsen TV ratings system was the definition of a lie agreed upon by an industry that profited from it. Everyone knew the ratings were inaccurate, yet people still got hired and fired, made and destroyed, because of numbers that everybody secretly knew couldn”t be trusted.
Regarding U.S. presidential elections, what if everything we know is wrong? What if someone did everything the “wrong” way, and what if that person still won? If Trump wins, the rules will never again be respected as they were. An entire class of political hacks will lose their jobs, fatally exposed as naked emperors. So I don”t want Trump to start doing things the “right” way, or to become “presidential,” or coherent, or “kind and gentle,” or toned down, or “friendlier.” I want him to continue tweeting idiotic memes while pissing on the idea of creating a functioning ground game in swing states. I want him to continue to make funny faces, and to sling childish insults, and to say in an insulting way something that a more “serious” candidate would sugarcoat for wider acceptance. I want the son of a bitch to act as unpresidential as humanly possible. I want The Washington Post and every other “paper of record” to keep attacking him, and I want the conservative establishment to join in.
This is a test, and it’s an important one. And the result could be bigger than the man who made it possible. Let’s have the Trump campaign do everything the wrong way, and let’s see what happens.
The smart money says he”ll get creamed, so I”m not placing any bets. But if he wins, regardless of whether or not he puts up his wall or rounds up Mexicans or bans Muslims or confronts China”regardless of all that”he will have, perhaps inadvertently, accomplished something truly amazing. An agreed-upon lie will be forever exposed as a fraud, and no one will ever again be able to preach that “this is the time-honored way you have to do things if you want to win.”
And that’s something worth casting your vote for, in an election year in which little else is.
